Unlike California’s majestic rivers and massive dams and
conveyance systems, groundwater is out of sight and underground,
though no less plentiful. The state’s enormous cache of
underground water is a great natural resource and has contributed
to the state becoming the nation’s top agricultural producer and
leader in high-tech industries.
Groundwater is also increasingly relied upon by growing cities
and thirsty farms, and it plays an important role in the future
sustainability of California’s overall water supply. In an
average year, roughly 40 percent of California’s water supply
comes from groundwater.
A new era of groundwater management began in 2014 with the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires local
and regional agencies to develop and implement sustainable
groundwater management plans with the state as the backstop.
The lawsuit Kern County filed this week against Gov. Gavin
Newsom is aimed at not only ending his de-facto ban on fracking
but also at easing state regulatory constraints on at least two
other oilfield techniques common locally. As part of its
larger argument that the Newsom administration has overstepped
its constitutional authority, Monday’s petition for a writ of
mandate in Kern County Superior Court asserts Newsom had no
right in 2019 to place a moratorium on high-pressure cyclic
steaming or require extensive “area of review” analyses prior
to approval of underground injections.
Water resources managers and the leaders in Northern California
continue to advance Ridgetop to River Mouth water management
… There are unique opportunities in the Sacramento River
Basin to advance ridgetop to river mouth water management,
which can best be envisioned by looking holistically at: 1)
headwaters and forest health, 2) floodplain reactivation for
public safety and fish and wildlife, 3) sustainable groundwater
management (including groundwater recharge and banking), 4)
healthy soils and farms; 5) safe drinking water; and 6) vital
rivers and streams.
The scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change
has in recent decades raised average temperatures in the West
about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and nearly two full degrees
on maximum temperature days, according to Matthew Lachniet, a
geoscience professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The days of Coloradans putting off climate change as a worry
for hurricane-ravaged Louisiana or a water-challenged Middle
East now seem to be over. Following are just a few of the
ways “climate change now” made its full force known in the
Rocky Mountains this year and showed its impact on everyday
life.
A month after the Visalia City Council threw out a policy
designed to prevent urban sprawl, the Sierra Club is
threatening to sue the city over the change … requesting
an injunction against implementation of the new policy, which
does not include an ag mitigation policy (AMP). … The
city attorney advised the General Plan could be “modified” due
to changes in case law since 2014, such as the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act which could affect the availability
of water to some farmland within the city’s growth boundaries.
New groundwater agencies in the Sacramento Valley are currently
finalizing plans to manage their groundwater basins for
long-term balance, as required by the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA). Successful stewardship demands good
information not only about groundwater conditions, but also
about surface water availability. To help build shared
understanding of surface water for agriculture—the valley’s
main water-using sector—we produced a new dataset showing how
access to this vital resource varies across irrigated farmland
in the Sacramento Valley and the Delta.
A bill that would have created a program to help farmers find
new life for farmland idled by coming groundwater restrictions
had its own phoenix moment last week in the Legislature when it
was simultaneously killed and reborn — this time with
money. AB 252, authored by Assemblymembers Robert Rivas
(D-Salinas) and Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield), died in the state
Senate last week but much of its content was reborn in a budget
bill with $50 million attached.
Various climate models differ on whether our area will get
slightly wetter or drier with rising temperatures. But they
have one prediction in common: greater extremes. Dry
years will be drier. Rainfall could come all at once in a few
large storms rather than spread across a season. … With
this in mind, water managers are designing and implementing
projects to capture, store and access clean water. Some
irrigation for crops in the Pajaro Valley might soon come from
lake water rather than groundwater. A project in Soquel will
use recycled water to replenish a groundwater basin. Another
project in Santa Cruz will inject excess runoff from winter
storms into wells.
About 2,700 wells across the state are projected to go dry this
year. If the drought continues, 1,000 more will go dry next
year. In 2014, the California Legislature enacted a package of
new laws that aimed to stop groundwater over-pumping, but as
CalMatters’ Rachel Becker reports seven years later, little has
changed for Californians relying on drinking water wells.
Depletion of their groundwater continues. Pumping is largely
unrestricted, and there are few, if any, protections in place.
To fill the post of chief agricultural negotiator at the United
States Trade Representative’s office, the Biden administration
dipped into California’s hot, dusty, drought-plagued San
Joaquin Valley and plucked out an almond-industry lobbyist.
… Biden is favoring the $6 billion almond industry at a
particularly fraught time in its history. The ever-expanding
groves of California’s Central Valley churn out nearly 80
percent of the globe’s almonds. -Written by Mother Jones reporter Tom
Philpott.
Unless you have a personal connection to the Central Valley or
work in agriculture, chances are you haven’t been able to speak
directly to a farmer about how they’re experiencing this year’s
historic drought. Recently on KQED Forum, three
farmers from the Central Valley, where roughly 40% of the
nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts are grown, shared just how
little water they have to work with, how they’re adapting, and
what the drought means for their industry long term.
A federal jury awarded the city of Pomona $48 million in
damages to be paid by a foreign corporation for contaminating
its groundwater with a toxic chemical mixed with fertilizer and
sold to citrus farmers for decades. On Sept. 7, the city won
its case against the American subsidiary of a multi-billion
dollar Chilean company, Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile,
known as SQM. The case, which began in 2011, bounced between
courts until the city won after presenting its full argument
recently in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The longer it takes for two new wells to be dug in Cantua Creek
and El Porvenir in western Fresno County, the deeper in debt
the towns are mired. Now, with the drought, those well projects
are in a race against dropping groundwater levels as farmers,
cut off from surface water supplies, are leaning more heavily
on the aquifer. The well projects started in 2018 and
aren’t scheduled to be completed until sometime next year.
For the past two decades, the southwestern United States has
been desiccated by one of the most severe long-term droughts—or
‘megadroughts’—of the last 1,200 years. And now, scientists say
the risk of similar extreme megadroughts and severe single-year
droughts will increase in the future as Earth’s temperature
continues to rise, according to a new study in Earth’s Future
sponsored by CPO’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and
Projections (MAPP) program and led by NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Environmental groups failed to justify blocking the federal
government from funding groundwater pumping in the Sacramento
River Valley pending a preliminary injunction hearing, a
federal court in California ruled. There’s no evidence that
pumping will immediately occur without injunctive relief,
according to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
of California. And even if it did happen, there’s no evidence
irreparable harm would occur between that time and the
preliminary injunction hearing, Judge William B. Shubb said
Tuesday.
The Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources
Control Board have developed draft groundwater management
principles and strategies to better anticipate and minimize the
impacts of drought on drinking water wells. Developed in
response to Governor Gavin Newsom’s April Executive Drought
Proclamation, the principles and strategies provide a framework
for State actions to proactively address impacts on
groundwater-dependent communities as droughts become more
frequent and intense as a result of climate change.
Some San Joaquin Valley farmers could someday have a new “crop”
to sell — their groundwater. In the face of looming
groundwater pumping restrictions, some groundwater agencies are
looking at internal markets to give growers a way to save water
and still earn a profit.
San Francisco, along with a handful of Central Valley
irrigation districts, is suing the state for enacting drought
restrictions that are keeping thousands of landowners and
suppliers from drawing water from rivers and creeks. The
lawsuit, filed late last week in Fresno County Superior Court,
claims that the State Water Resources Control Board — drought
or no drought — does not have the authority to suspend the
draws of those with the most senior claims to California’s
water.
First came the asparagus field. Then came the melons. And now
Joe Del Bosque is considering the unthinkable: tearing out a
sprawling almond orchard bursting with healthy, nut-producing
trees. … Two decades of almost unrelenting growth
vaulted almonds into the upper ranks of California agriculture.
Now, though, the state’s $6 billion-a-year industry is
being humbled by a devastating drought. Farmers have
slowed the pace of new orchard plantings and, in a few cases,
have plowed up trees still capable of bearing almonds.
A proposed water district in northwestern Butte County won a
split-vote endorsement from the Butte County Water Commission,
after a lengthy public hearing. The commission voted 6-3 to
recommend the Board of Supervisors support formation of the
Tuscan Water District. Even though the vote was just advisory,
there were two hours of public comment. When the supervisors
take up the matter Sept. 14, their action will also just be
advisory, as the Local Agency Formation Commission is the
entity that will determine whether the district is formed.
Record dry conditions once again in the West have led the
federal and state governments to declare water supply
shortages. California’s governor has declared that 50 counties,
in which approximately 41% of the state’s population exists,
are now under a drought state of emergency. This prompted the
adoption of emergency regulations ordering water rights holders
to curtail their water diversions on numerous northern
California rivers.
Rare earth elements are finding their way into Colorado water
supplies, driven by changes in climate, finds a new study
published in the journal Environmental Science &
Technology. Rare earth elements are necessary components
of many computing and other high-tech devices, like cell phones
and hard drives. But there is growing recognition that they can
be hazardous in the environment even at low levels of
concentration.
Researchers have suspected for years that drought conditions
worsen groundwater quality, but a study published this week
provides strong evidence proving the long-held assumption.
While previous studies have focused on the risk of wells being
overdrawn and run dry during drought, the study from the United
States Geological Survey and the California State Water
Resources Control Board is the first to directly link drought
to deteriorating water quality on a regional scale. The study
looked at 30 years of data from California’s Central Valley.
Enough water for 60,000 Orange County residents can be
generated by more efficient release of rainwater from the Prado
Dam into the Santa Ana River, according to a new multi-agency
report. During a year of average rainfall, that’s the amount of
water currently flowing into the ocean that could be captured
for urban use, according to the two co-chairmen of the
committee overseeing project.
Life in Tooleville wasn’t easy before the latest
drought. Residents of this tiny, two-road farmworker
community, tucked into the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills
in eastern Tulare County, have been living on bottled water
since 2014 because its two wells are contaminated with
hexavalent chromium. Then in July, one of those wells
started to dry up, thanks to plummeting groundwater levels.
State Water Resources Control Board officials agree
Tooleville’s other well will likely hit sand in a matter of
months.
Sanctuary Forest recently broke ground on a restoration project
in McKee Creek between Whitethorn and Ettersburg junctions in
Southern Humboldt. The project aims to address historical
logging impacts and “recharge” groundwater storages to enhance
essential flows for threatened salmon species. Anna Rogers,
administrative director for Sanctuary Forest, said McKee Creek
was rated as a Priority 1 tributary for coho salmon recovery in
the Mattole Coho Recovery Strategy based on spawning and
rearing documented in the past decade.
They all remember when the San Luis Valley brimmed with water.
South of San Luis, Ronda Lobato raced the rising floodwaters in
San Francisco Creek every spring to fill sandbags that
protected her grandparents’ farm. North of Center, potato
farmer Sheldon Rockey faced so much spring mud that he had to
learn to extract his stuck tractor. Outside Monte Vista,
Tyler Mitchell needed only a hand shovel on the family farm
near Monte Vista to reach shallow underground flows in the
Valley’s once-abundant water table.
Nicole Horseherder lives in Hard Rock, Ariz., population 53.
Hard Rock sits on the Black Mesa, which takes its name from the
numerous coal seams running through the plateau in western
Arizona. Horseherder’s home has no running water, as it
is prohibitively expensive to drill down to the nearest aquifer
that has potable water. Twice a week, she drives her
20-year-old, three-quarter-ton GMC pickup—towing a 500-gal.
tank mounted on a flatbed trailer—to a community well 25 miles
away. Coal and water have dominated
Horseherder’s life and work for the past decade.
Madera County is running out of time as groundwater levels
plummet to new depths. Wells are going dry everywhere. Drillers
have months-long waitlists. Residents are scrambling for water
tanks. And farmers will soon face a reckoning after
agriculture’s footprint, particularly nut trees, has more than
doubled in the past 50 years — far outpacing irrigation
supplies.
The San Joaquin Valley is quickly become home to another
ignominious superlative: greatest number of water outages per
community. The state’s ever-worsening drought conditions are
pushing Valley communities to the brink on the precipice of a
statewide recall election. As the Sept. 14 election nears,
former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer returned to the San
Joaquin Valley on Friday for a briefing with members of the
Latino Water Coalition, Fresno County Supervisors, and an
assemblage of some of the top water experts in the region.
Tucked between two mountain ranges in Northern California’s
Siskiyou County, the Shasta Valley is as complex as it is
impressive. … The dearth of knowledge is perhaps most
pronounced when it comes to what scientists call the
hydrogeology of the groundwater basin –– how exactly water
moves through the volcanic rock below the ground. The movement
of that water is the economic linchpin of the valley, with
cattle ranchers, alfalfa farmers, cannabis growers, and others
all depending on it. And thousands of residents also depend on
the groundwater for their homes.
The California State Water Resources Board (SWRCB) has given
the city of Needles $3 million for drinking water
infrastructure, according to a press release. The funding will
support a new drinking well and booster station. The City of
Needles worst fears were realized In July when the only well
that supplies the community with portable drinking water
failed. The city was able to identify the replacement
part and repaired the well within 24 hours.
Water wells in the Edna Valley used to be shallow: “You could
put a well to 30 or 40 feet. Well that’s just kind of
unrealistic [now],” Edna Valley Growers Mutual Company
President Bob Schiebelhut said. Some of those shallow wells
didn’t make it through the last drought, drying up and forcing
landowners to drill a little deeper. Now in a new drought, Edna
Valley farmers and residents are once again praying for rain,
Schiebelhut said. But they’re also moving forward with SLO
County and the city of SLO on a plan to make their groundwater
more drought resilient.
Maria Olivera’s house sits on a dirt road that dead-ends at the
Friant Kern Canal, the 152-mile aqueduct quenching the endless
thirst of the San Joaquin Valley crops that feed the country.
She’s called Tooleville home since 1974, where residents have
been fighting to attain the basic human right to clean drinking
water for the better part of two decades.
The Santa Clarita Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency
announced it will hold its final in-person workshop on Aug. 25
for residents to provide their input on a draft plan for
long-term management of the local groundwater basin. The
workshop is the last in-person opportunity for the public to
ask questions and weigh in on issues and proposed projects and
management actions designed to protect the basin from overuse.
Nearly 200 people in the Klamath Basin this summer reported
their wells going dry. In response, local and federal emergency
officials have delivered hundreds of the 2,500-gallon,
igloo-shaped storage tanks that can hook up to people’s homes
to get some water flowing through their pipes again. When
someone’s well runs dry, they can first try and drop their pump
deeper into their well. That’s the equipment that pumps water
from the well into pipes that run into a building.
Summers are getting hotter. Rain and snowpack are disappearing,
and water reserves are shrinking. This reduction of readily
available, adequate water resources is creating a crisis that
directly harms Californians and their environment. Studies have
found that one million Californians do not have safe drinking
water. In addition, during the last drought, about 3,500
domestic wells went dry and about 2,600 households were
negatively affected by the lack of available water.
As if I’m a thirsty person craving my next drink, I keep
thinking about water. I hear the stories. A 20-acre family farm
sits fallow. Down the road, another piece of land has the same
barren look. Is the problem reasonable crop values or access to
water? Likely, a bucket of both. Fresno averages 11.5
inches of rain per year. Total precipitation from Oct. 1, 2020
to date is 6.59 inches, or 60% of normal — a larger percentage
than most parts of the state. In the canal I floated down
as a kid, not a drop of water has flowed all season.
-Written by Danielle R. Shapazian, a nurse and writer who
lives in Fresno.
Resources are available to help San Joaquin Valley residents
affected by drought maintain access to drinking water. A
group of organizations in the San Joaquin Valley coordinated by
the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley Water
Workgroup have developed an outreach plan and a list of
resources available to private well owners or part of a small
community who have lost or are concerned about losing access to
drinking water due to groundwater level.
Summer is underway and that means splashing around Putah Creek,
hiking, camping, and… heat domes? With this excessive heat, the
thought on everyone’s minds is likely how does this severe
drought affect water resources throughout California? The
extreme temperatures coupled with the low snowpack in the
Sierra have meant fast evaporation in many of the state’s
reservoirs; not to mention a heat dome that has descended upon
much of the United States bringing record breaking heat to even
the most mild summer climates.
In the wake of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) declaring
a federal water shortage of the Colorado River Basin, NGWA is
again stressing the need for increased funding for aquifer
recharge and water reuse projects in the western United States.
On August 16, the USBR declared its first-ever water shortage
of the Colorado River Basin, which will trigger a smaller
amount of water distributed from Lake Mead and cuts to
individual state water allocations.
Fourteen years ago, Heriberto Sevilla came across a ranch on
the outskirts of Madera set among fields of stalk grass and
bright wildflowers. Pepper trees dotted the meadow, and
children played in the natural lakes created by heavy rains. It
was the perfect place to raise a big family. … But then
a darkness came over the little Eden the Sevillas had
created. Amid two years of relentless drought, the well’s
output slowly tapered off. The family was forced to buy gallons
of precious water from the grocery store to take showers, clean
dishes and cook.
It was just before sunrise in July when the botanists Naomi
Fraga and Maria Jesus threw on backpacks and crunched their way
across a brittle alkaline flat in the hottest corner of the
Mojave Desert. Their mission: to rescue a tiny plant teetering
on the brink of extinction. … Today, the species [Nitrophila
mohavensis] has dwindled to fewer than 150,000, and most of the
plants that still sprout from this salt-white playa have
stopped producing viable seeds — stressed victims of decreasing
rainfall, rising temperatures and the loss of groundwater due
to pumping.
Kelly O’Brien’s drinking water well had been in its death
throes for days before its pump finally gave out over Memorial
Day weekend. … Soon O’Brien learned that other wells
were failing around her. She heard about one neighbor to the
north, another to the east. The list kept growing: She started
a Facebook group for owners of dry wells to share their woes
and resources, and it grew to more than 665 members.
Signs of drought proliferate across the American
West. California is rationing water for farmers in the state’s
Central Valley. Salmon are dying en masse in the
Pacific Northwest as river temperatures climb. Lake Mead,
on the border of Nevada and Arizona, is drying up. …
Groundwater is the source of drinking water for half of
Americans, and nearly all of the country’s rural communities.
… But groundwater has become dangerously depleted in places
where pumping has exceeded the rate at which aquifers are
naturally replenished.
The well fixer and I were standing at the edge of an almond
orchard in the exhausted middle of California. It was late
July, and so many wells on the farms of Madera County were
coming up dry that he was running out of parts to fix them. In
this latest round of western drought, desperate voices were
calling him at six in the morning and again at midnight. They
were puzzled why their pumps were coughing up sand, the water’s
flow to their orchards now a trickle.
Pistachios have recently become perhaps the top choice for
institutional investors in Kern County agriculture, apparently
surpassing almonds. Farmland brokers say prices and demand for
local pistachio orchards — the few properties listed for sale,
anyway — have increased since about 2019 because of the
trees’ longevity, crop price stability and higher tolerance for
limited and lower-quality water supplies.
Included in the sweeping $1 trillion infrastructure bill
approved by the Senate is funding for Western water projects
that farmers, water providers and environmentalists say are
badly needed across the parched region. … The plan would
provide $1.15 billion for improving water storage and transport
infrastructure such as dams and canals. Groundwater storage
projects, which replenish underground aquifers that aren’t
vulnerable to evaporation, would also get funding.
The Town of Discovery Bay is seeking public comment on the
latest additions to its groundwater sustainability plan (GSP).
Comments are due by Aug. 16. Unlike other East County
communities which use a blend of water drawn from the Delta and
groundwater, Discovery Bay residents are completely reliant on
groundwater for all household and commercial uses.
Napa Valley Country Club golf course is lush and green, thanks
to the purple pipe. A two-year drought is helping to
boost Napa County’s recycled water use to record levels. The
Napa Sanitation District wastewater treatment plant provides
enough non-potable irrigation water annually to fill St.
Helena’s Bell Canyon reservoir and more. Napa Valley Country
Club in rural Coombsville started piping water from the plant
six miles away in late 2015. That allows it to depend less on a
well in an area where groundwater levels have long been a
concern.
As drought conditions worsen, public officials in Southern
California are beginning to take steps to conserve dwindling
resources. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California — one of the largest water distributors in the
nation — is weighing whether to declare a supply alert for the
first time in seven years, officials said. And one of its
customers, the city of Glendale, this week implemented new
mandatory conservation requirements for its residents.
The City of Roseville is going underground to tap into drinking
water as its primary source dries up during the drought. They
have a plan to supply water to more than 50,000 homes. For
years, Roseville relied almost exclusively on surface water
from Folsom Lake for drinking water. But that can be tricky and
near impossible, considering previous and current droughts —
plus studies showing the impacts of climate change.
As the drought deepens, industries that rely on water are
facing a desperate situation and that includes the wine regions
of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys where one producer has literally
run dry. Chris Loxton, of Loxton Cellars, spends so much time
in his Glen Ellen vineyard that he can spot the slightest
changes in his grapevines and the news isn’t good. …
Vineyards across this famous wine-growing region are beginning
to show signs of stress from lack of water.
Two motions to block the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater
Authority’s groundwater replenishment fee were shot down in
court this week. Judge Kirk H. Nakamura of Orange County
Superior Court granted motions filed by the Indian Wells Valley
Groundwater Authority to dismiss two separate actions filed by
Searles Valley Minerals and Mojave Pistachios. The actions were
aimed at stopping the collection of the groundwater
replenishment fee, which was imposed last January to fund the
cost of securing rights to water to bring to the Indian Wells
Valley Groundwater Basin.
For the second time, State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe
Ntuk has used his discretionary authority, as opposed to
technical standards, to reject a series of permit applications
to use the controversial oilfield technique known as fracking.
Ntuk sent a letter Monday to Bakersfield-based oil producer
Aera Energy LLC saying he has reviewed and denied applications
filed by the company to hydraulically fracture 14 wells in the
South Belridge oil field in western Kern County.
With the drought rapidly drying up reservoirs, farmers are
desperately searching for new sources of water and some of them
are turning to a mysterious method, thousands of years old. …
[Rob] Thompson, who owns Thompson Well Location in Sonoma
County, practices the mysterious art of dowsing, locating
underground water with nothing more than a pair of bent steel
rods. He touches his rods to the ground to reset them, then
begins to move them. When they point toward water, the rods
magically cross each other, almost like they become magnetized.
In July, the number of dry wells registered in Klamath County
was at 84. A month later, that number has climbed to 185 as
wells from the California state line all the way to Crescent
and La Pine are getting low and going dry. There are likely
more unregistered dry wells in Klamath County. The county
watermaster’s office said they receive daily calls from well
owners asking how to register. And the Modoc County Sheriff
shared a PSA on Facebook explaining what to do if someone in
that county is without well water.
[S]igns of this subsidence are nearly invisible to the human
eye. There are no cracks in the walls of the typical American
shops in the town’s center, nor crevices opening up in the
streets or fields: to measure subsidence, Californian
authorities had to turn to NASA, which used satellites to
analyze the geological change. And yet, over the past 100
years, Corcoran has sunken “the equivalent of a two-story
house,” Jeanine Jones, a manager with the California Department
of Water Resources, told AFP.
The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board has
appointed Jayne Joy as its new executive officer. Joy replaces
Hope Smythe, who devoted 37 years to the regional board and
served as executive officer since 2017. … Joy, an engineer
who was promoted in July, was the regional board’s assistant
executive officer since November 2017. Since earning a
bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego
in chemical engineering, she has managed a broad array of
environmental programs in Southern California in the areas of
water and wastewater treatment, groundwater studies and
remediation, and solid waste management.
Another hurdle has been cleared in the pending and much needed
repairs of a 33-mile stretch of the Friant-Kern Canal. Known as
the Friant-Kern Canal Middle Reach Capacity Project, repairs
will be done on the 33-mile stretch of the canal form between
Lindsay and Strathmore to North Kern County. When the federal
government provided $206 million in funding for the project
last year that meant the project would finally become a
reality.
Monterey Peninsula water officials are breathing a sigh of
relief after a monitoring well in the Seaside Basin picked up
increased salt levels, prompting concerns that an underground
reservoir of potable water was being infiltrated by seawater.
But it turned out the salts were from a failed well casing that
allowed saltier shallow water from the Dune Sands to enter into
the well and cross-contaminate the deeper body of water called
the Paso Robles Aquifer that is tapped for drinking
water.
A $1.3 million study is underway at the University of Arizona
to learn more about how PFAS enters the ground and contaminates
water to effort remediation. “It’s a really big issue and
we are starting to tackle this particular problem of PFAS being
present in soils due to the many decades of the use of PFAS in
almost every aspect of our life and also at the military
sites,” said Bo Guo, principle investigator.
If you live in Paso Robles or Atascadero, you may have seen a
strange sight this weekend: a helicopter with a large hoop on
it, flying 200 feet above the ground. The Department of Water
Resources held something called an airborne electromagnetic
survey of that area to collect data on the groundwater basin
there. During one of these surveys, the helicopter tows
electronic equipment — which looks like a large hoop — that
sends signals into the ground, which then bounce back. It’s
like taking an MRI of the ground’s subsurface — and it helps
the DWR know more about our groundwater basin.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Water Authority
announced today a 30-day public comment period for a repayment
contract related to costs of extraordinary operation and
maintenance work on the Friant-Kern Canal Middle Reach Capacity
Correction Project. This project will restore a 33-mile stretch
of the canal that has lost over half of its original capacity
to subsidence.
The San Benito County Water District, which manages groundwater
around Hollister, has released for public review a draft plan
that will set out ways to ensure healthy, equitable supplies of
the local resource. District officials on July 29 made their
draft of the North San Benito Basin Groundwater Sustainability
Plan available for a 90-day public review as required by state
law. The periodically updated 357-page document assesses water
levels and land use conditions. It proposes ways the district
can manage water for long-term groundwater sustainability.
A new study has found that cannabis farms in California’s prime
growing regions, including the North Coast, rely primarily on
groundwater wells to irrigate their crop as opposed to streams,
providing more insight into the debate over water scarcity as
the state grapples with a historic drought. The Cannabis
Research Center at UC Berkeley report found that well water use
by cannabis farms is common statewide, exceeding 75% among
farms that have permits to grow in nine of the 11 top
cannabis-producing counties that include Sonoma, Mendocino and
Lake counties.
Climate change projections show the Central Valley will see
more hot, dry years like 2021, but also some dangerously wet
years as well. This year has already seen high temperatures,
drought and high fire risk for Central Valley residents, and
Jordi Vasquez, environmental scientist for the California
Department of Water Resources, said climate models show the
Central Valley heating up 6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end
of the century. … The biggest impact for Central Valley
communities like Hanford will be water management, Vasquez
said.
In Spanish, Sierra Nevada means “snowy mountain range.” While
the term “snowy” has generally been true for most of U.S.
history, those mountains have seen less snow accumulation in
recent years. This decline plays a role in water management and
response to drought in California and other western states.
Each spring and summer, meltwater runoff from Sierra Nevada
snowpack helps replenish rivers and reservoirs, while also
recharging the groundwater. In fact, snowpack accounts for
about 30 percent of California’s water supply in a typical
year, according to the California Department of Water
Resources.
When it comes to water witches — also known as dowsers,
diviners, doodlebuggers and various other names — in our
so-called enlightened times, though, we’re faced with two
distinct possibilities. One, they’re either really good, and
have been for a long time, at pulling a fast one on desperate
landowners looking for groundwater. Or, two, they actually
know what they’re doing …
At the monthly Mendocino City Community Services District
meeting the board discussed the ground water management
ordinance penalty options for constituents who do not comply to
the permitting and monitoring requirements. The board also
continued to discuss options for drought mitigations. The
Ground Water Extraction Permit Ordinance 2020-1 that passed in
April of 2020 reiterated the district’s authority to compel any
property owner within district boundaries to obtain a ground
water extraction permit and install a meter, monitor their
water usage and report it monthly to MCCSD.
As drought conditions worsen in the western U.S., it is there
that water is becoming more and more scarce. As for that which
is at the surface and below, you know, the subsurface supply,
is everything being done that can be done to get the most out
of this extremely valuable resource? In California’s San
Joaquin Valley, according to information imparted on the Jul.
20, 2021 edition of the PBS “News Hour,” agriculture drinks up
half of the groundwater supply. In some Valley locations, water
availability is extremely limited.
California’s courts routinely impose punitive damages awards
against polluters that knowingly release hazardous substances
which contaminate groundwater. But California has been slow to
follow the nationwide trend favoring punitive damages awards
against polluters that knowingly fail to remediate their past
hazardous releases before those releases spread and cause
greater harm.
A study tracking regulatory compliance costs in California was
recently released, with striking findings. Researchers looked
at data from 22 different farms of various sizes in the San
Joaquin Valley between 2012 and 2018. During that timeframe,
regulatory costs increased by 265 percent. Professor of
Agribusiness at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and co-author
of the report, Lynn Hamilton said several factors
contributed to the significant increase.
With rural wells running dry and reservoir levels dwindling
amid the Western drought, California senators are pressing
Congress for an infusion of cash to renovate the state’s
collapsing drinking water system. But instead of new dams or
desalination plants, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla
want … to boost stormwater capture, groundwater recharge
and water recycling efforts in the Golden State and throughout
the U.S.
The small, rural community of Tooleville is on the brink of
going dry after one of its two wells went down Friday morning.
It’s the second community in Tulare County to suffer water
problems in the last two months as California struggles through
the grip of a devastating drought. The only well in the town of
Teviston, also in rural Tulare County, broke down June 9
leaving residents there dry until the pump was fixed July 16.
With temperatures in Dubai regularly surpassing 115 degrees
Fahrenheit, the government has decided to take control of the
scorching weather. Scientists in the United Arab Emirates
are making it rain — artificially — using electrical charges
from drones to manipulate the weather and force rainfall across
the desert nation. Meteorological officials released video
footage this week showing a downpour over Ras al Khaimah, as
well as several other regions. The new method
of cloud seeding shows promise in helping to mitigate
drought conditions worldwide …
After some negotiation, the Friant Water Authority Board of
Directors will vote on a repayment contract with the Bureau of
Reclamation regarding the repair of a portion of the
Friant-Kern Canal. The Friant Water Authority and the
Bureau of Reclamation held its second round of negotiations
Thursday morning, which was a two-hour process hammering out
contract language in the repayment deal. … At the center
of the issue is a 33-mile stretch of the Friant-Kern Canal that
has lost over half of its original capacity to
subsidence.
A lot of the fruits, vegetables and nuts that you see in
grocery stores come from California. Growing them takes a huge
amount of water, which is a huge problem when the state is in
the middle of a drought. California’s farmers are pumping most
of that water from underground aquifers. They can’t keep doing
that, though, especially as the climate changes. NPR’s Dan
Charles has the story.
Has double-digit growth within the California almond industry
ended? Will last year’s 3.1-billion-pound crop be the largest
on record? Is the industry ready to open a new chapter centered
around something other than year-over-year record crops? Every
year the news was pretty much the same from the Almond Board of
California – predictions of double-digit annual growth as
industry insiders talked up new markets and pointed to
impressive numbers from the monthly position reports.
As water resources managers work hard this summer to deliver
limited water supplies to cities, rural communities, farms,
refuges and fisheries–while also providing essential
hydropower for the state’s energy grid–there is increasing
attention to prepare for the next water year. … As we think
about water management opportunities for next year, there is an
increasing focus on groundwater recharge …
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
One day last month, water in the community of Teviston, about
66 miles south of Fresno, suddenly stopped flowing. The
town’s services office fielded calls from residents who said
their taps ran dry, and when city leaders opened their own
faucets, nothing came out. Soon, officials realized that
the town’s main well had stopped working. … [T]he water
level below the community has been dropping for the last 14
years, and two different wells had already failed.
After over a month of transporting water from nearby towns and
delivering bottled water to residents, the rural Tulare County
community of Teviston had running water again Monday.
Teviston’s only well broke down in early June, leaving hundreds
of residents without running water. Teviston Community Services
District board member, Frank Galaviz, said that the well is
“back online” in an interview on Monday with The Bee. … In
total, Teviston residents went without running water for two to
three weeks, said board President Martin Correa.
Rick Daniels lies awake at night worrying about a rusty
contraption in a forlorn field, littered with discarded pipes
and fire hydrants. It is the only water pump in Needles that
meets state water quality standards, running 23 hours a day to
keep up with demand, according to Daniels, the city manager.
That’s a thin margin in one of America’s hottest cities, an
urban speck in the desert near California’s border with
Arizona. If this lone pump fails, 5,000 residents face the
ultimate risk of taps running dry, as temperatures soar past
120 degrees …
Residents, along with the local population of Mallard ducks,
Canada geese and coots will soon get their Legacy Park nature
preserve back. The pond, which is normally kept full most of
the year with storm runoff water, totally dried up this spring
in the middle of duckling season. The statewide drought took
its toll. Meanwhile, the construction of a new office park and
shopping center—the La Paz project—right across the street was
running into difficulties with groundwater as workers excavated
a future underground parking garage.
In a vineyard flanked by scorched hills and charcoal trees, Rob
Thompson gripped two stainless steel rods, began rotating in a
circle and counted under his breath. Then he said he had
found it — water, hundreds of feet beneath the parched
ground. “This is really good,” said Mr. Thompson, 53,
scratching an ‘X’ into the ashen soil with his shoe. “This is a
deep one: 750 feet, 55 to 60 gallons a minute.” He added, “This
one I can feel.” Mr. Thompson is a water witch.
In June 2021, the Department of Water Resources released the
first groundwater sustainability plan decisions ahead of the
statutory deadline identified in the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act – commonly called SGMA. The long-term
planning required for SGMA will provide a buffer against
drought and climate change and over time will contribute to
reliable water supplies regardless of weather patterns in the
State.
The Tehama County Board of Supervisors approved an emergency
resolution Tuesday that would allow residents with dry wells to
purchase water directly from the county. Though not in the
original agenda for the meeting, Chief Administrative Officer
Bill Goodwin added the item as an addendum, which consisted of
a presentation on why the resolution would be necessary. County
administration has been looking at different wells within its
jurisdiction to obtain the water from. Initially, the county
looked toward the well at Ridgeway Park but discovered the
water was non-potable and for irrigation only.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is using an
innovative, helicopter-based technology to gather information
about the state’s groundwater aquifer structure to support
drought response and the implementation of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). DWR’s use of airborne
electromagnetic (AEM) surveys advances Governor Newsom’s Water
Resilience Portfolio goal of using technology to support
the State’s understanding of groundwater resources.
As we careen deeper into drought, California will face
increasing impacts to urban and agricultural economies, rivers
and forests, and wildlife. In response, government agencies
will need to determine how to allocate water among competing
needs. Water users will scramble to buy and sell water — if
they can — or reduce their use. But the current lack of
information hobbles the ability to make difficult decisions
about water management. For California to cope with persistent
shortages, water rights data need to be accessible to
decision-makers and the public. -Written by Michael Kiparsky, director of the
Wheeler Water Institute in the Center for Law, Energy and the
Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.
City of Santa Cruz water rights — that were established more
than 50 years ago — are up for revision and will be discussed
at two forthcoming public meetings. The rights, allocated by
the California State Water Resources Control Board, dictate
where and how water suppliers can use and move water.
… The revision to the rights, could open up doors for
the city to store winter water in aquifers such as the Mid
County Groundwater Basin, by which Soquel Creek and Central
Water Districts both pull water from.
A prominent oil and gas lobbying group seeks to strip
environmental protections from groundwater sources designated
by the state for agricultural use and which may grow
increasingly important to California’s water-scarce future,
according to a memo obtained through a records request. The
proposal, which hasn’t been publicly announced, suggests
removing protections for groundwater reserves underneath 1,500
square surface miles in western Kern County, where the
upper groundwater zone alone can extend down thousands of feet.
A California water myth which becomes especially pernicious in
droughts is that California is “running out of water”. Viewing
California’s supply and demand pressures in terms of fixed
water requirements perpetuates this myth and invariably places
undue attention on building additional supply infrastructure.
Instead, managing water as a scarce resource suggests a
balanced portfolio of water trading, investments in conveyance,
smart groundwater replenishment, and demand management.
Groundwater, a subject of growing concern, will be discussed
Tuesday during the Tehama County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Clay Parker, the groundwater commissioner and Red Bluff
councilman, will be delivering a report to the board with an
update on the Groundwater Sustainability Plan and the Domestic
and Agricultural Well Ad Hoc Committee. … The committee is
still in early development, although the agenda report said an
ordinance is expected to be brought before the board by the end
of the year.
California denied 21 oil drilling permits this week in the
latest move toward ending fracking in a state that makes
millions from the petroleum industry but is seeing widespread
drought and more dangerous fire seasons linked to climate
change. … Fracking involves injecting high-pressure
water deep underground to extract oil or gas from rock. Critics
say it can pollute groundwater and contributes to climate
change.
An environmental group dedicated to promoting healthy waterways
around California is taking Sonoma County to court over
permitting policies it says too liberally allow people to drill
groundwater wells, potentially endangering Russian River stream
flows. California Coastkeeper, an affiliate of the locally
based Russian Riverkeeper and a dozen or so other organizations
around the state, filed the first-of-its-kind lawsuit late last
month amid the intensifying drought and a surge in well
drilling around the region.
The drought is here, and agriculture is scrambling. Water
regulators have cut the amount that can be taken from lakes,
rivers and streams. Farmers who ordinarily get that water
either have to forgo planting some of their fields, or pump
water from the ground, or a combination of the two. Farmers
dependent on wells are also affected… Neither the state nor
the federal water projects are delivering water for agriculture
from Northern California to south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta.
The water spigots on California farms will soon be twisted
tighter. As the state faces a growing threat from drought, an
increasing number of water agencies are planning to require
flow meters on agricultural wells, part of a landmark effort to
measure and constrain pumping that used to be free and
unlimited. It’s a controversial step aimed at protecting water
supplies that could change cultivation practices in the Golden
State’s thirsty fields.
The epicenter of dry wells during California’s last devastating
drought was undoubtedly Porterville. The small Tulare County
town saw wells go dry en masse in its unincorporated east side.
It became a national headline as the media descended. Amid the
glare of tv cameras, the state pledged to help and agreed to
build three new wells. Five years have gone by, the state is in
the grip of another drought and Porterville is walking a
tightrope as the state connected more than 755 new homes to the
city’s water system but only built one new well.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) published
its first reviews of local groundwater sustainability plans as
part of a 2014 state law regulating groundwater—and two Central
Coast aquifers are included in the initial wave of feedback.
DWR reviewed and found “deficiencies” in the Paso Robles
Groundwater Basin and Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin
sustainability plans—declining to give final approval to
either.
Twenty years before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for
climate science to be put on trial, an official from the
powerful pro-business lobby group crafted what would prove to
be a prescient message on global warming. Harvey Alter,
who ran the Chamber’s resources policy department at the time,
said in 1989 there was “broad consensus” that human-made
climate change would likely have a disastrous impact on coastal
communities and farmers. … “Wetlands will flood, salt
water will infuse fresh water supplies, and there will be
changes in the distribution of tree and crop species and
agricultural productivity,” Alter said.
As drought settles over the San Joaquin Valley, a new report
warns of other circumstances that could result in entire
communities losing drinking water. More than a million Valley
residents could lose their public water in coming decades under
the sweeping groundwater legislation known as the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), according to the paper
published earlier this month by the non-profit Pacific
Institute. Signed into law in 2014, SGMA aims over the next two
decades to reduce California’s groundwater deficit by balancing
water pumped out of the ground with the amount replenished.
California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), a
landmark piece of legislation in the quest for comprehensive
management of California’s groundwater, required the creation
of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs), and authorized
local governments either to form GSAs separately or join with
other local governments in the same groundwater basin. This was
the genesis of 74 interorganizational agreements now examined
in a new report, which focuses on whether, given the high
stakes and history of conflict in water resources management in
California, participants were prepared for disagreements with
dispute resolution clauses in their planning.
The Glenn County Board of Supervisors approved an interim
ordinance Tuesday that puts a temporary stoppage on the
drilling of new agriculture water well permits in Glenn County.
The moratorium, which took place immediately Tuesday, lasts for
45 days. County staff stated in the public hearing Tuesday that
California is going through a drought and Glenn County and
other areas of California are seeing the effect on water
wells.
The drought is intensifying efforts to conserve all of Sonoma
County’s water resources, including a supply that has eluded
oversight until recently: groundwater. But even as plans for
groundwater monitoring and sustainable use proceed, tensions
are building over its management. The authority to evaluate and
regulate groundwater comes from a 2014 law crafted in the
middle of the state’s last drought.
A recent report from Arizona State University warns the state
is mining groundwater faster than it can be replaced. The
report focuses on five areas around the state including
Prescott and Phoenix that fall under the rules of the 1980
Groundwater Management Act. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with
water expert Sarah Porter about the report’s conclusions.
Help may be on the horizon for the about 700 residents of East
Orosi dependent on bottled water. The Tulare County Board of
Supervisors has directed county staff to begin negotiating the
scope of work and a budget … to take control of the East
Orosi Community Services District public water system.
… East Orosi’s water has been plagued with nitrates from
fertilizers and coliform bacteria since at least 2003, for
which their water system has been cited for violating the
Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) both contaminants dozens of
times.
The move to end mining in a Tri-Valley lake became official
this week. Alameda County planning commissioners on Monday
approved plans for restoring the Eliot Quarry, where more than
a century of rock mining in the unincorporated area between
Livermore and Pleasanton will eventually be turned into lakes
surrounded by open fields and recreation trails. … [T]he
project will include the planting of native trees and shrubs,
creating passages for fish, and reducing the amount of
groundwater lost to San Francisco Bay by deepening the lake so
it can hold more water.
Using drinking water to keep our parks luscious and green isn’t
uncommon in San Francisco, but it’s something the city is
working to change. Golden Gate Park currently uses its own
groundwater wells to irrigate the park, which has water quality
permitted for drinking water standards. The Panhandle uses
water from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
(SFPUC). By summer 2022, barring any delays, the water used for
irrigation and lake fill would instead come from a recycled
water system that’s currently under construction to replace the
current watering system.
Forty two percent of shallow wells supplying water to community
water systems in California’s San Joaquin Valley are vulnerable
to going partially or fully dry under the state’s minimum
thresholds, finds a new report from the Pacific Institute. Most
impacted wells are shallower, and tend to be in disadvantaged
communities.
Mechanical engineer Brent Yamasaki set out amid the recent
blistering heat wave to take stock of the giant dams, pumps and
pipes that support Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County, the
largest storehouse of water in Southern
California…. water availability in Southern California
“is expected to remain relatively stable over the next few
years,” says Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s chief operating officer.
“Diamond Valley Lake is a key part of that forecast….”
On Sunday evening, a well motor failed in a Madera Ranchos
community water system that serves around 1,000
homes. Last week, another well pump stopped working in
Parksdale, southeast of Madera. Neither community has lost
water service. Both are experiencing low pressure. Madera
County Public Works runs both water systems. From Madera
Acres to the Bonadelle Ranchos, private wells are running
dry at an alarming rate. Self-Help Enterprises, an
organization that supports communities with water challenges,
has been tracking the problem.
In this blistering year in California, drinking water wells are
going dry in increasing numbers, rekindling memories of the
historic drought of 2012 to 2016, when more than 2,600 wells
across the state stopped producing water. So many wells went
dry in 2014 in the town of East Porterville that Tulare County
supplied portable public showers. California is not yet to that
level of emergency…. But because the trend lines do not look
promising, government agencies and nonprofit groups are
preparing for a difficult summer in which thousands of wells
could fail.
Unlike most Bay Area cities, Morgan Hill gets 100 percent of
its water from underground wells. And that’s a big reason why
the city became the first in Santa Clara County to issue
mandatory water use restrictions. … The mayor said he
enjoys his green grass as much as the next person, but said
mandatory watering cutbacks to just two days a week and only in
the early morning or late evening hours mean it won’t look lush
for long.
Central Valley cattle ranchers are gearing up for a fight
against what they see as groundwater rustling. Their fear is
that newly formed groundwater agencies in some areas could
devalue their land by not giving them a fair share of their own
groundwater. Ranchers believe those fears were realized on June
8 when the Madera County Board of Supervisors approved a
groundwater allocation that will partially exclude rangeland.
Ranchers who own rangeland that has never been irrigated won’t
receive a share of the county’s “transitional water” allotment.
Instead of turning on the faucet to fill her pots to cook
dinner, Maria Olivera turns to her drums of state issued water
sitting next to the stove at her home in Tooleville.
… Tooleville spans all of two dusty dirt roads at the
edge of the Friant-Kern Canal, where the blue hue of flowing
water is just out of sight over raised levees. Along with it,
the basic human right of having clean drinking water. Nitrates
from farming fertilizers have rendered the water undrinkable in
Tooleville, and the community is dependent on biweekly water
deliveries.
As California suffers from a major drought and enters a climate
change fueled wildfire season, oil and gas operators continue
to use hundreds of millions of gallons of freshwater for
drilling operations annually. It’s a vicious symbiotic cycle:
fracking and drilling contribute to climate change and suck up
finite water resources, then drought and wildfires worsen from
climate change.
The drought facing the Western United States is
bad. Really bad. It’s become worse faster than the last
one. As more of the United States suffers from drought
conditions and water supplies are diminishing, water
demands are rising. Smaller water supplies combined with
increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and other effects
of climate change pose an enormous threat by creating a
feedback loop that exacerbates drought conditions and
increases wildfire risk across the United States.
As California plunges into another “historic” drought, people
across the state are worried about water shortages. But the
last drought never really ended for some Californians, like
residents of East Porterville that still have emergency water
storage tanks in their front yards. With the state’s current
financial surplus, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity
to fund drought preparedness and water safety in communities
that have lived for decades with shallow and contaminated
drinking water wells, inadequate water treatment, and other
infrastructure failures… -Written by Carolina Garcia, a resident of Tombstone
Territory, and Sandra Chavez, a member of the
Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER)
Advisory Group.
Much of California’s $50 billion agricultural industry depends
on groundwater. We typically see only what this water makes
possible above the soil: almond and pistachio groves, citrus
orchards, rows of lettuce and grapevines and cattle herds in a
valley that supplies a quarter of the nation’s food even when
surface water is scarce. But a lot is happening below the
surface. Deep underground, intricate channels of sand and
gravel weave through tightly packed clays and silts, allowing
Earth to hold water like a sponge.
Severe drought is gripping most of California, but its misery
isn’t spread equally. While most of the state compares today’s
extreme conditions to previous droughts, people in Tulare
County speak of drought — in the singular, as in a continuous
state of being. … Tulare County’s never-ending drought
brings dried up wells and plenty of misery The entire West is
suffering from extreme dryness, heat and fire risk, and the
small, rural towns of northern Tulare County, outside of
Visalia, are caught in its vortex.
A large oilfield wastewater disposal pond near Buttonwillow
will likely close this summer, and its operator and last
remaining customer will together pay $645,000 in penalties and
fees, under a recent court settlement that further restricts a
decades-old practice that has become a focus of regional water
quality regulators. The accord concludes a 2019 lawsuit that
accused facility owner Valley Water Management Co. and
Colorado-based oil producer Sentinel Peak Resources of dumping
fluid containing harmful chemicals above a reservoir that
provides local drinking and irrigation water.
A $45 million project that will partially reshape the area
around the mouth of the Carmel River promises to increase flood
control and restore the biodiversity in the area. Called the
“Carmel River Floodplain Restoration and Environmental
Enhancement,” the nonprofit Big Sur Land Trust, Monterey
County, the Monterey Regional Parks District and the state are
collaborating to restore the historic floodplain of a portion
of the Carmel River where it meets Highway 1.
Military bases across California, including some in San Diego,
have tested positive for a toxic chemical. A bill sponsored by
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla attempts to find the money to finally
clean up the legacy of PFAS. The Department of Defense has
known for decades that a chemical found in aviation fire
fighting foam contains potentially toxic polyfluoroalkyl
substances (PFAS), which has been linked to cancer when found
in groundwater, Padilla said.
Restoration implies returning to a prior state. A broken cup
carefully glued, might appear nearly as whole as the original,
but will always differ from the original. Ecosystem
restoration attempts to return an evolving web of
interconnected species and physical processes to a prior state.
This endeavor raises complex questions: what prior state should
be the restoration target?
During the budget hearings on June 8, the Mendocino County
Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a proposal for a
standalone water agency to combat water insecurity in Mendocino
County. This water agency will immediately focus on the local
drought emergency and work on other water-related projects,
such as water curtailment and groundwater management, in the
future.
The first assessments of groundwater sustainability
plans have been released by the California Department of
Water Resources (DWR). In lieu of waiting until the end of the
two-year review period, DWR has decided to release assessments
as they are completed. Assessments have been completed for the
Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin in Santa Cruz County and 180/400
Foot Aquifer Subbasin in Monterey County. Assessments
for the Cuyama Valley Basin and Paso Robles Subbasin have also
been completed.
We’re moving later this summer to new quarters closer to the
Sacramento River, and we don’t want to haul all of our water
maps, Layperson’s Guides, DVDs and more to the new home. So
we’re making you a limited-time offer we hope you can’t refuse:
Take 30 percent off the price of all of our maps, guides
and more.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
At the Kern County Water Summit held last week, hosted by the
Water Association of Kern County, Acting Deputy Director of the
Department of Water Resources Statewide Groundwater Management
Program Steven Springhorn provided an update on the
Department’s progress on SGMA implementation, including the
Department’s review of the submitted Groundwater Sustainability
Plans and the existing and proposed SGMA-related assistance.
The Union has printed several opinion pieces by Idaho-Maryland
Mine Project opponents. The majority of these columns present
“information” that’s either biased or misleading and based
neither on science nor logic. Here are the facts.
… Recent columns erroneously suggest that groundwater
impacts cannot be accurately predicted. Numerous expert
hydrogeologists and a century of mining at the Idaho-Maryland
say otherwise. … The actual conclusion is that no wells
would be drained… -Written by Ben Mossman, president of Rise Grass
Valley and CEO of Rise Gold Corp., U.S. corporations.
When a historic drought gripped California and the Bay Area,
water managers came together to keep drinkable water in the
homes of vulnerable areas in Marin and Contra Costa Counties.
Two veterans of those efforts describe the dramatic process,
and consider lessons it offers for today’s imminent drought.
Against the backdrop of what’s shaping up as a devastating
drought year, the California Department of Water Resources has
released its first assessments of groundwater sustainability
plans developed by local agencies to meet the requirements of
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The department
released reviews of four local plans, approving two but sending
the other two back to local groundwater sustainability
agencies, saying the plans need more work.
Normally, the biggest vegetable grower in Sonoma County,
Humberto Castañeda Produce, grows heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers,
corn, watermelons and other crops on 180 acres outside of Santa
Rosa. But this year, Humberto Castañeda and his son, Gabriel,
are farming only 17 acres after receiving a fraction of their
normal allotment of water from the city of Santa Rosa.
… The Castañedas are among countless farmers across the
state taking drastic measures to deal with the drought…
[During the last drought], small rural communities reliant on
shallow wells — many of them communities of color — were among
the most affected. More than 2,600 households reported losing
access to water because their wells went dry between 2012–16.
(That number is likely an undercount as reporting was
voluntary.) Much has changed however since the 2012–16 drought.
Drought reporting systems such as MyDryWaterSupply are
available today, and better data on domestic well depths and
locations, as well as groundwater levels, aid our understanding
of drought risk. -Written by Rich Pauloo, co-founder of the Water Data
Lab; and Alvar Escriva-Bou, a research fellow at the
Public Policy Institute of California Water.
In unburned forests, the spring runoff is a glorious, annual
event. But not this year. [U.S. Forest service ecologist Liz]
Roberts and other forest experts know that the runoff will
carry an array of frightening heavy metals and ash-laden
sediment generated in the burned soils, posing danger to the
people of Glenwood Springs, who rely on Grizzly Creek and its
neighbor just to the west, No Name Creek, for drinking
water.
For decades, large red-hot furnaces cooked the lead from
smashed batteries at the Exide plant, just seven miles from
Downtown Los Angeles, spouting plumes of toxic air that settled
on and contaminated thousands of homes. … In the years
since, the facility has been cited repeatedly for serious
compliance problems. According to a former DTSC senior
scientist’s review of public records, at least four are
responsible for soil and groundwater contamination that the
department has or should have known about for years or even
decades.
Among the nearly one hundred development projects pending on
the county of Napa Current Projects website comes a sleeper of
a project likely to go unnoticed by Napa city residents and
businesses who will be most negatively impacted. The remote
vineyard development project, proposed deep in the
headwaters above Lake Hennessey, seeks to clear 156.8 acres of
existing vegetation including oak woodlands, foothill pine
communities, and grasslands in order to construct a vineyard in
the Conn Creek/Lake Hennessey watershed. -Written by Kellie Anderson, resident of Angwin.
Not all farmland in the San Joaquin Valley will survive in a
post-SGMA world. Estimates are that the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act will force between 500,000 to one million acres
of land that’s currently farmed to be taken out of production
to save groundwater. Which lands and what will become of those
lands are major question marks at this point. If Gov. Newsom’s
revised budget is approved as is, those questions could have an
extra $500 million to help find answers.
The wait is over for some Groundwater Sustainability Agencies
(GSAs). The California Department of Water Resources (DWR)
released the first Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP)
assessments for four basins yesterday, June 3, 2021. DWR
approved the 180/400 Foot Aquifer Subbasin in Salinas Valley
and the Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin. DWR determined both GSPs
“satisf[y] the objectives of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) and substantially compl[y] with the GSP
Regulations.”
Recent research from the US Geological Survey (USGS) suggests
that droughts, particularly the prolonged kind happening in
parts of the US, could increase the risk of harmful arsenic
exposure for people that rely on well water. Hundreds of
millions of years ago, the baseline quality of your drinking
water may have been set in stone, literally. Arsenic is a
common groundwater contaminant, largely because of local
geology. In Maine, for instance, the formation of the
Appalachian Mountains and volcanic activity came together to
concentrate arsenic and other metals into cracks inside the
bedrock…
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released its
first assessments of groundwater sustainability plans developed
by local agencies to meet the requirements of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). DWR has completed its
assessment and approved plans for the Santa Cruz Mid-County
Basin in Santa Cruz County and 180/400 Foot Aquifer Subbasin in
Monterey County.
Water Audit California is suing to make Napa County increase
oversight of groundwater pumping for vineyards, wineries, and
other uses, claiming that the pumping affects the Napa River.
The lawsuit said the county has a “public trust” duty to care
for the river. The idea is that too much groundwater pumping
from wells can keep groundwater from seeping into the river
during dry months, to the detriment of fish and other aquatic
life.
Groundwater is one of the hottest ticket items in California’s
water world these days. But much about it is a mystery. Where
is it? How does it move? Which are the best spots to percolate
water into the ground for storage? At least two technologies
hope to answer some of those questions: airborne
electromagnetic surveys and interferometric synthetic aperture
radar. That’s AEM and InSAR for short.
Cynthia Beltran moved to Sunizona with her seven-year-old son
last autumn even though the area lacks functional drinking
water wells, because it was all she could afford. She cannot
afford the $15,000 cost of deepening her well, which dried
up last year, and had been paying for a local firm to deliver
water in a tanker. But at $100 a week it became too expensive,
so now she will be relying on a friend to help her fetch water
from her mother’s well. … Nearly 20 wells in Sunizona
alone were deepened between 2015 and 2019, after they dried
up.
California farmers and ranchers are preparing for a difficult
growing season as the state faces drought conditions. The
California Board of Food and Agriculture met on Tuesday to
discuss ways to help farmers and ranchers, as well as to
discuss the proposed $5.1 billion included in the governor’s
budget to address drought challenges and water infrastructure.
After back-to-back dry years, the state’s water supply is
strained, forcing farmers like Joe Martinez in Solano County to
figure out ways to get the most out of their water.
Free bottled water has begun to arrive at homes
with nitrate-tainted wells in parts of Stanislaus and
Merced counties. The ambitious effort, funded by farmers
and other parties, launched the week of May 10 with free
testing of residential wells. Those that exceeded the nitrate
threshold can start getting the 5-gallon jugs about 17 to 21
days later.
Can California regions regulate groundwater without destroying
their businesses and communities? That’s the question being
posed as regions and localities implement the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the historic 2014 state law
that brought regulation to California’s diminishing groundwater
supplies. –Written by columnist Joe Matthews
Can California regulate groundwater without destroying its own
communities? That’s the question being posed as regions
implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA),
the historic 2014 state law regulating California’s diminishing
groundwater supplies. Groundwater is buried in aquifers,
underground spaces between rocks, soils, and sand. Layers of
aquifers are called groundwater basins. California has hundreds
of them. Eight-five percent of Californians depend on
groundwater …
-Written by Joe Mathews, who writes the Connecting
California column for Zócalo Public Square.
Back in 1977, President Jimmy Carter wanted to put the Central
Arizona Project on a hit list of 17 water projects he found too
expensive and environmentally destructive. … [N]ow, as CAP’s
first water shortages draw near, a more subtle, long-term
threat to the Tucson area’s water future is emerging because of
climate change.
Two large reservoirs in our backyard are capable of holding
40,000 acre feet of water to recharge the underground table.
But federal rules prevent them from reaching capacity and it
will take an act of Congress to change the rules. Big Dry
Creek Reservoir in Clovis and Fancher Creek Reservoir east of
Clovis together can hold 40,000 acre feet of storm water.
That’s water that can eventually stream into the underground
water table.
The appeal filed by Gordon Bennett of a proposed well outside
of Point Reyes Station was rejected on Monday by planning
commissioners, who said they did not have the expertise to
evaluate it. Mr. Bennett says he will now appeal the
project to the Board of Supervisors, and will keep appealing
until someone addresses his concerns about maintaining a
minimum flow for endangered coho salmon in Lagunitas
Creek.
Over the past decade, the farming town of Corcoran, California,
has been sinking two feet every year as agriculture firms pump
underground water to irrigate crops. The 7.47 square-mile area
in California’s San Joaquin Valley has 21,960 people and has
sunk 11.5 feet in the last 14 years. According to
the USGS California Water Science Center, the sinking is
the product of agriculture industries pumping underground water
to irrigate their crops for decades.
A team of USDA agricultural scientists in the Golden State are
helping farmers make the most out of a natural resource that is
becoming ever more precious – water. California produces
two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts and one-third of its
vegetables, but above average temperatures and long-term
drought have put a strain on the water resources it takes to
grow these crops. Most of California’s precipitation falls
during the winter, which means summertime irrigation is
required to produce many of the state’s crops. Higher
temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns increase water
demand and reduce supply.
Who has the right to water in the Kern River? It has been the
subject of fierce legal battles throughout Bakersfield’s
history, and on Friday, the Ventura County Superior Court tried
to answer a part of that question. In a court ruling, Judge
Kevin DeNoce found the city of Bakersfield must supply the
North Kern Water Storage District with 20,000 acre feet of
water it owed the district in 2020 and pay the district $2.8
million to reimburse groundwater pumping costs the district
incurred last year. It’s the latest court decision in a
long-running dispute, and it threatens to limit the city’s
ability to use water from the Kern River.
After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water
repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after
rainfall events – a phenomenon that many scientists have
attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry.
But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by
wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new paper
from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada.
California’s water supply got cut again Wednesday, with the
federal government reducing allocations to cities and farms as
the drought intensified. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
announced that municipal water agencies that rely on the
Central Valley Project will have this year’s allocations
slashed from 55% down to 25% — a level not seen since the
drought of 2015. That could put additional pressure on the
municipalities around greater Sacramento that depend on
supplies from Folsom Lake, whose water levels have sunk
dramatically this spring. The reservoir is at 46% of its usual
capacity for late May.
Because Bay Area low-lying sewage treatment plants remain
vulnerable to rising sea levels, government regulators told
sewage facility managers to “provide a written plan for coping
with SLR by the fall of 2021 – or they will be given a
plan.” The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit reached out to
10 “at risk” sewage treatment plants to see those
plans. All except one provided extensive documents of
their proposals, the cost to address them, and even provided
tours of completed work. San Francisco’s Public Utilities
Commission replied to the Investigative Unit’s public records
request that after a “diligent search for records…no records
were found.”
Day after day, sheriff’s deputies drive up and down the road
outside Steve Griset’s 600-acre farm, pulling over anyone who
appears to be hauling water for the thousands of marijuana
greenhouses that have taken over the countryside here. Griset
has become a target, even though he grows alfalfa. Last year,
investigators with the Siskiyou County District Attorney’s
Office raided Griset’s house with a search warrant looking for
his business records, and the DA followed up with a lawsuit in
civil court. Griset’s alleged transgressions? He was selling
water from his well to his pot-farming neighbors, immigrants of
Hmong descent …
The Marin County Planning Commission voted on Monday to reject
an environmental group’s petition to block a West Marin water
supply project over potential impacts to Lagunitas Creek flows
and endangered wildlife. The decision allows the North Marin
Water District to build a new well that it says is necessary to
ensure its West Marin customers have adequate water supply in
the face of the worsening saltwater contamination at some of
its existing wells.
In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of
Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost
impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using
satellite technology to fully grasp. Corcoran is sinking. Over
the past 14 years, the town has sunk as much as 11.5 feet in
some places — enough to swallow the entire first floor of a
two-story house and to at times make Corcoran one of the
fastest-sinking areas in the country, according to experts with
the United States Geological Survey.
Anew report warning Arizona’s urban area aquifers remain at
risk from groundwater pumping is drawing praise from several
water experts, including some who once worked for the state
agency that enforces the law regulating pumping.
The Arizona Legislature wants to look into the feasibility of
pumping water from the Mississippi River to Arizona. But the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has already studied the idea, and
weighed in on the project in 2012. The agency studied factors
such as cost, legal issues, power use and the amount of time
the project would take. A report estimated the project could
cost up to $14 billion; the timetable was around 30
years.
California’s Governor Newsom recently declared a drought
emergency throughout much of California and announced over $5
billion in new water program investments. These twin
emergency and funding announcements are a classic “bad-news
creates good news story” (and potentially vice versa) for
California’s water problems. They are opportunities for
innovation and making long-term improvements for California’s
water problems. They also can reward and entrench less
effective programs and approaches.
When Sierra snow seeps into the ground or evaporates before it
can flow downstream into reservoirs, you know California is
facing a severe drought. It’s happening this spring up and down
the mountain range that is a primary water source for the
state. Water from snowmelt that hydrologists had expected only
a few weeks ago to replenish foothill reservoirs is vanishing.
It’s being absorbed by the parched soil or dissipating into the
thin mountain air. -Written by George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District is
pleased to announce that Kristin Sicke has been selected to
become the new general manager of the irrigation
district. The District’s primary mission is to provide
surface water for agricultural purposes in western Yolo County,
and is integral to monitoring and maintaining sustainable
groundwater supplies within the county.
In wetter times, these feathery beds of asparagus would produce
generations of tender green spears, reaching for the vast San
Joaquin Valley sky. [Last] Monday they were disked into the dry
dirt, their long lives cut short by unreliable and expensive
water. … With no guarantee of irrigation water this
summer, Del Bosque and other California farmers are making
tough choices, sacrificing one crop to save another. The
strategy is part of a larger and longer agricultural shift here
in the heart of California’s $50 billion agriculture industry:
Low-value, high-water crops are disappearing from the Golden
State.
Growers in the Central Coast region of California produce most
of the cool-season vegetables for the U.S. from March to
mid-November. After several years of multi-cropping vegetables,
the groundwater in many of the coastal valleys has become
contaminated with nitrate. Some wells have concentrations of
nitrate several times the federal drinking water standard of 10
ppm (parts per million) nitrate-N. Rural communities that rely
on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water must
purchase bottled water or install small reverse osmosis
systems.
The Estrella-El Pomar-Creston Water District (EPCWD) has begun
creating a groundwater level monitoring network. Initially, the
district has begun work to add 30 new groundwater level
monitoring sites, using existing wells, throughout the
37,000-acre district. The campaign marks a significant
effort in the basin to move toward groundwater sustainability
in the Paso Robles Subbasin, according to the EPCWD.
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
Crystal Geyser bought the nearly 145,000 square foot bottling
plant in 2013. Since then, it’s been the target of protests by
local activists and members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Opponents say if it ever started operating, it would draw down
too much water, and cause air and noise pollution. … They are
in the midst of suing the beverage company in an effort to get
a new environmental impact report.
More wildfires. Hotter days. Drought. Sea-level rise. Those
conditions are an increasing reality in California, which is
steadily becoming an altered state. But if the grimmest
predictions of experts about our state and climate change
become true, the conditions will become far worse.
Current and future climate change effects are intensifying the
hydrological cycle, leading to increased variability of both
precipitation and runoff. This heightened pattern results in
more frequent and severe droughts and floods, as well as more
recurrent swings between these two extremes. Harvesting
floodwaters using managed aquifer recharge to replenish
depleted groundwater aquifers can simultaneously reduce flood
and drought risks.
A state appeals court has upheld California’s cleanup standards
for a cancer-causing chemical that was added to pesticides and
has polluted groundwater in the Central Valley, rejecting
challenges by manufacturers that may have to pay the costs. The
State Water Resources Control Board’s 2017 mandate for removing
nearly all TCP (1,2,3-trichloropropane) from drinking water was
contested by the California Manufacturers and Technology
Association, representing Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil, which
included the chemical in worm-killing fumigants widely used by
farmers through the 1980s.
Millions of people are betting on Arizona. They’re buying
homes, starting businesses, and families. The future of how we
use our water resources may dictate the future of their
success. … That question was addressed four decades earlier
with the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. The idea was the
law would ensure when water was taken out, just as much was put
back in, creating what they called a safe yield goal by
2025. Unfortunately, a new study released by ASU
researchers with the Kyl Center shows the law is not living up
to its promise as deep, thousands of years old aquifers
continue to be over-pumped.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on May 14 unveiled
his May budget revision that allocates $200
million to plug abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells, many
located near low-income residential areas where the majority of
residents are Latino and Black. In January
2020, a report by the California Council on
Science & Technology revealed that California taxpayers could
be on the hook for more than $500 million to plug thousands of
“orphan” wells drilled and abandoned by oil and gas companies.
.. Plugging all 107,000 oil and wells in California when
they become idle would cost more than $9 billion, the
report also found.
Construction on 8 miles of water pipeline that will be serve as
life-blood for the Pure Water Soquel Project, is set to begin
on May 24 in Santa Cruz. Three distinct components of building
are set to take place during the next several months. From late
May until June 15 crews will work around California Street,
from the Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility to Laurel
Street. After that, and until around July 6, construction will
take place on Laurel Street to Chestnut Street. The third
scheduled construction phase will run from July 6 through Aug.
12 on Chestnut to the west end of the Laurel Street Bridge.
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
San Diego’s vulnerability to water shortages and drought is
shrinking significantly because residents and businesses are
using less water and city officials are boosting the local
supply. A new city analysis shows local water use dropped
sharply from 81.5 billion gallons in 2007 to about 57 billion
gallons in 2020, even though the city’s population has grown
about 1 percent per year over that time. The new data has
prompted city officials to revise downward long-term
projections of local water use by about 20 percent compared to
their estimates from 2015, the last time the city conducted
such an analysis.
Nancy Smith remembered that children had called it “the sick
land” — the wedge of property alongside the 110 Freeway where a
dry cleaning facility had laundered aprons and uniforms for
decades across from a Lincoln Heights elementary school.
… Decades after the old Welch’s laundry was shuttered,
California regulators worked to clean up the soil and check the
groundwater for the chemicals used there — volatile
organic compounds such as tetrachloroethylene that could damage
the human liver and nervous system and have
been tied to an increased risk of cancer. The Department
of Toxic Substances Control oversaw a cleanup effort that
lasted for years and has continued to monitor groundwater at
the site.
Last year, for the first time, it became possible to trade
water on Wall Street through futures contracts. Normally
reserved for commodities like oil or precious metals, water
became the latest asset to join the financial market. But how
could this practice impact the planet? The trading in the
future prices of highly-prized commodities, where buyers agree
to purchase an asset at a set date in the future for an agreed
price, began in Japan in the seventeenth century with the
trading in rice futures. The latest commodity to begin trading
in futures is water supplied in American’s most populous state,
California.
Earth’s surface is ever changing. Sinkholes swallow
neighborhoods, river deltas slowly slide beneath the waves, and
fertile fields lose elevation as farmers draw large amounts of
water for irrigation from underlying aquifers. [T]hese
phenomena are known as subsidence … Building heavy
structures such as homes, skyscrapers, and even entire cities
also can trigger subsidence, explains Tom Parsons, a
geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Moffett Field, CA.
Recently, he used computer simulations to estimate the effect
of San Francisco and its metropolitan area—where he and 7.75
million other people reside—on Earth’s crust.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural
Statistics Service (NASS) is forecasting another record almond
crop for California. The 2021 California Almond Subjective
Forecast estimates a three percent increase from last year’s
3.12-billion-pound crop. According to USDA-NASS, California
growers could be looking at a 2021 crop of 3.2 billion pounds.
If that number comes to fruition, it would be the largest
almond crop on record.
Less than a week after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought
emergency for Northern California, Folsom Lake is standing at
one of its lowest levels ever. … Ryan Ojakian is
with the Regional Water Authority (RWA). Now, there’s a push
from the RWA for its 20 water providers that serve about 2
million people in the Sacramento region to shift to using more
groundwater than surface water to reduce reliance on Folsom
Lake and the Lower American River.
A permit has been granted by Tehama County for the
establishment of a new groundwater monitoring station located
at the Corning Public Works maintenance yard on Gallagher
Avenue near Highway 99W. During a presentation on the project
to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors, county Public Works
Flood Control Manager Ryan Teubert said there will be no cost
to the county as the yard is owned by Tehama County, and
drilling, installation and construction costs will be paid for,
and performed, by the California Department of Water Resources.
Rural, low-income Latino communities across California were
hardest hit by the last drought and could see drinking water
shortages again this year as extreme drought spreads across the
state, according to a report released Thursday by non-partisan
advisors to California’s lawmakers. The report from the
Legislative Analyst’s Office warns state officials to prepare
by ramping up monitoring of wells in vulnerable communities and
lining up emergency drinking water supplies to send
there.
In 1980, Arizona began regulating groundwater in the state’s
largest cities and suburbs under a landmark law that
called for most of these areas to achieve an overarching
goal by 2025: a long-term balance between the amount of
water pumped from the ground and the amount seeping back
underground to replenish aquifers. Forty-one years
later … [g]roundwater is still overpumped in most of the
state’s “active-management areas,” or AMAs. And in many places,
aquifer levels continue to decline.
Beavers, known for their work ethic, tenacity and sometimes
destructive instincts, are making a comeback in the worlds of
science and water as researchers look for natural ways to
restore rivers and wetlands and improve the health of
drought-stressed aquifers. … This fall, Colorado Headwaters,
a nonprofit that advocates for protecting and restoring
headwater regions in the state, is sponsoring a beaver summit,
a conference designed to unveil some of the latest ecological
research on creatures once valued only for their glossy fur.
On its surface, the idea of banking water to bridge the
certainty of future rain-deficient periods seems like an
innovative and non-controversial planning procedure. In the
end, however, it all depends on who holds the keys to the bank.
The notion of water banking has grabbed local attention lately
following a controversial and divided 3-2 vote March 3 by San
Luis Obispo County supervisors, a vote which numerous North
County entities view as opening the door to selling and
exporting county water resources to the highest outside bidder.
A federal agency Wednesday forecast a record harvest of 3.2
billion pounds of almonds in California. That would be a 3%
increase over 2020 for the nuts, the highest-grossing crop in
Stanislaus and several other counties. The report will set the
tone for the global almond trade, since California accounts for
about 80% of the supply. Several thousand people work on farms
and in processing plants in the Central Valley.
Ben Tobin has questions about the Grand Canyon’s caves. The
University of Kentucky geologist started learning about caves
as a young man, in part because his mother was a geologist, and
a childhood fascination grew over time. … When he was in
college, an internship in Arkansas doing cave tours got him
hooked, and eventually his work brought him out West, to Grand
Canyon National Park. Tobin specializes in what’s known as
karst hydrology. These are underground systems made up of
soluble rock such as limestone. To Tobin, caves are like
another world, with blind animals, fossils and archeological
finds.
When Sandra Chavez’ mother discovered she had stage four cancer
last year, one of Sandra’s first thoughts was about their
water. Her family’s private well is contaminated with nitrates
and Chavez wondered if years of drinking the water could have
caused her mother’s sickness. Chavez and her family have relied
on bottled water since they found out their well water was
unsafe in 2015. But sometimes they don’t have enough and are
forced to drink the contaminated water. So when Chavez
found out about a new program providing free bottled water
delivery for families with nitrate-contaminated wells, she was
frustrated she hadn’t been contacted.
